Three months prior to the release of Kid A MP3 tracks of the entire album made their way onto the file sharing service. As Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire detailed in his essay Did Napster Take Radiohead’s New Album to Number 1?, millions of fans had possession of this music by the time the CD hit stores. The record industry assumed the album was now doomed to failure since fans already had the music for free. Instead the opposite happened and the band, which had never hit the US top 20 before, captured the number one spot in Kid A’s debut week. With the record’s absence of radio airplay, big time marketing, and any other factor that may have explained this stunning success, Menta declared this was proof of the promotional powers of file trading and of word-of-mouth generated by the Net.
Who’da thunk it?
Interesting piece: if you’re not familiar with the above anecdote or the Offspring’s attempt to pre-release an album via the net (nixed by their label: what if it worked and they couldn’t blame Napster for their failures anymore?), check it out.
[composed and posted with ecto]